Emotion and Emotional Attachment

The sensation and expression of emotion are fundamental to the human animal’s experience. It has become increasingly clear to many researchers that emotional responses pervade human consciousness, even in thought processes that are believed to be rigidly “objective” (however that word might be defined) or purely intellectual. Emotion has been and continues to be an extraordinarily significant part of our history. It is, quite literally, a major factor in every historical event and a ubiquitous feature of daily human interaction. But defining what emotion is isn’t as straightforward as one might imagine.

Defining and Describing Emotion

It is universally agreed that emotional response is tied unalterably to a person’s perception of what is important to them at the moment in time that has caused the response. When we dig deeper and ask ourselves what emotion is, we are confronted by the fact that emotion has an ineffable element to it, and any attempt to put this ineffable element into words immediately distorts or misrepresents the emotional experience. In a sense, emotion is similar to perception or even consciousness itself. It cannot be defined by description alone. It must be felt, known, lived. Moreover, all emotions are (obviously) subjectively experienced. No one’s experience of joy, sorrow, anger, grief, or any other emotion will be exactly like that of another human. As with all aspects of human experience, we must rely for our understanding on the principle of assumed similarity, a sort of emotional general ground that most humans share, in order to proceed in our examination of human reality.

With these caveats in mind, what are the widely accepted definitions? The temptation here is to immediately start listing various affects and affect displays, but this really doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. So neurologists, psychologists, and other researchers take a more formal approach.

A Canadian researcher contends that consciousness is a four-dimensional experience, one that possesses quality, duration, intensity, and what he terms hedonicity, the latter term being a metric of pleasure or displeasure. Emotion, an aspect of consciousness, he defines as a mental experience possessing both high intensity and a high hedonic component.¹

The neurologist Antonio Damasio has proposed that there is a distinction between feeling and emotion:

 …the term feeling should be reserved for the private, mental experience of an emotion, while the term emotion should be used to designate the collection of responses, many of which are publicly observable.²

Damasio contends that the mechanisms of emotion can arise without consciousness, even if these emotions are then consciously experienced. He goes on to give a compelling way to think of the feeling of emotion:

It is the representation of that transient change in organism state in terms of neural patterns and ensuing images. When those images are accompanied, one instant later, by a sense of self in the act of knowing, and when they are enhanced, they become conscious. They are, in the true sense, feelings of feelings.³

A pair of emotion researchers take what is called an adaptationist perspective on emotion. It is their view that natural selection produced emotions to help animals deal with dangers and to exploit opportunities for advantage. The basic emotions are therefore physiological responses that serve to help an animal adapt to the conditions in which it finds itself. They mobilize the body’s resources, coordinating changes in them to more effectively respond to a particular situation or stimulus.⁴

Works that offer a variety of contributions by experts in a field help us see the range of scientific opinion on a topic. One such noteworthy volume offers the following definitions of the term emotion:

Emotion may be understood as the outcome of an evaluation of the extent to which one’s goals are being met in interaction with the environment.⁵

I would say that emotions are specific and consistent collections of physiological responses triggered by certain brain systems when the organism represents certain objects or situations [either internal or external or retrieved from memory].⁶

A pair of researchers put it this way:

…an emotion is one of a large set of differentiated biologically based complex conditions that are about something.

They go on to elaborate that emotions have four components: cognitive (which evaluates the personal significance of the event or stimulus involved), motivational-behavioral (which assesses what action can be taken), somatic (in which the body’s nervous and musculoskeletal systems are mobilized for feeling the emotion involved), and subjective-experiential (in which the person feeling the emotion is aware of it, is experiencing it subjectively, and is integrating it with other feelings and knowledge). These components interact with each other, and display variable levels of duration and intensity.⁷

A psychologist at The University of Delaware who was noted for his contributions to emotion research laid out what he referred to as Seven Principles that explain the nature and manifestation of emotion. His main points (paraphrased) are as follows:

1.  The feeling of emotion is the product of neurobiological evolution. It is the key aspect of both emotion and consciousness, and is more adaptive than maladaptive.

2.  Emotions were crucial in the evolution of consciousness. Throughout a person’s life, emotion is the chief factor that influences the contents of their consciousness and how those contents are focused.

3.  Because they are felt and experienced, emotion feelings are central to motivation and overt behavior.

4. Fundamental emotions help to motivate and shape the response of a human to challenges to their well-being. Perception, cognition, and emotion feeling all interact in a dynamic way in these responses. These interactions can generate experiences that cause a human to have the same core feelings, but different thoughts and plans of action.

5.  How emotions are used usually depends on the interaction of cognition and emotional response. The uses to which emotions are put come in part from the experience of emotion feeling and in part from learned behaviors.

6. Emotions become maladaptive, and even potentially pathological, when learning connects emotions to erroneous cognitions and harmful actions.

7.  Interest is an emotion and in the normal mind, under ordinary conditions, it is present continually. It motivates humans to engage in creative or other positive activities, engagement that leads to a sense of well-being. In interaction with other emotions, it causes selective attention. This attention influences all other mental processes.⁸

Psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett points to the phenomenon of interoception:

Simple pleasant and unpleasant feelings come from an ongoing process inside you called interoception. Interoception is your brain’s representation of all sensations from your internal organs and tissues, the hormones in your blood, and your immune system… This interoceptive activity produces the spectrum of basic feeling from pleasant to unpleasant, from calm to jittery, and even completely neutral…Interoception is in fact one of the core ingredients of emotion, just as flour and water are core ingredients of bread, but these feelings that come from interoception are much simpler than full-blown emotional experiences like joy and sadness.⁹

So, in sum, we may say that when a human perceives a particular kind of situation, one which they find either pleasing or displeasing, or when that human draws a parallel to this situation from memory, a response arises. Sometimes this response begins in the non-conscious part of the brain. This response is tied to the person’s evaluation of the immediate importance of the situation being responded to, or else the strength and/or persistence of a remembered response. The response mobilizes the body’s physiology for action and combines with the human’s cognition (especially the learned or constructed reaction to similar situations from the past) to generate what may be considered an emotion, something which is felt within the mind and expressed outside of it. And as we are about to see, the roots of this reaction are very ancient indeed.

The Evolution of Emotion in the Animal Kingdom

There is a tremendous range of behaviors in the animal kingdom, a vast spectrum ranging from completely predictable behavior to behaviors which are, to varying degrees, unpredictable. The simplest animals, several of them the direct lineal descendants of the first animal life, behave as they are genetically programmed, with no deviation. They do what they do because they can do nothing else. They lack any trace of conscious awareness. The vast majority of these simple animals do possess rudimentary nervous systems, and they do respond to certain stimuli. But they do not show anger or pleasure or surprise or approval. They simply respond. The evolution of emotional responses broadened the behavioral repertoire. Animal responses to perceived situations now became the basis of much behavior, an attempt to re-establish internal equilibrium.

It would appear that various emotions evolved at different times within Kingdom Animalia. Researchers generally believe that fear was the first emotion to emerge. Fear has utility for obvious reasons. Animals typically have predators, or else natural enemies that compete for ecological niches and resources. Fear motivates action, action which can save the animal from harm or even death, thus contributing to potential reproductive advantage.

A prominent researcher in the field contends that fear was preceded by a far older animal response to the world, a survival circuit in the brain that evolved as a way of defending animals from harm. The key to this circuit is the amygdala, a structure all vertebrates possess, and which evolved more the 400 million ybp. Based on the research he and his colleagues performed, he has concluded:

…sensory inputs to, and motor outputs from the amygdala are responsible for the behavioural and physiological expression of conditioned fear responses. And importantly, within the amygdala, a systematic pattern of synaptic connectivity from the input region (i.e. lateral nucleus) to the output region (i.e. central nucleus) was revealed. Further, while synaptic plasticity was found to occur throughout the amygdala circuitry, plasticity in the lateral amygdala seemed particularly important, based on the short latency of the neural changes and their necessity in supporting plasticity in other areas.¹⁰

In 2024 a team of researchers contended that the basic fear response emerged at least 700 million ybp, and has been conserved across enormous numbers of species. They distinguish fear from other emotions by highlighting its anticipatory nature. The fear response arises when an animal perceives that a negative or aversive outcome may occur in an unfolding situation. If the animal is unable to avoid this situation, one of two responses will occur. If the animal believes it has a chance to survive the encounter, its anger will erupt. Anger will mobilize the animal’s physiology to deal with the situation. If the animal believes it cannot avoid the bad outcome, it will respond with sorrow, which may mobilize others of its kind to help.¹¹

In connection with this, a very widespread phenomenon in the animal kingdom is the reaction known as Fight or Flight. When an animal is confronted with a threatening situation, the sympathetic nervous system floods the body with adrenaline and noradrenaline which in turn mobilizes the body’s physiology, increasing such things as muscle strength and metabolism, among other effects. This allows the body to bring more strength and endurance to the situation at hand. After the threat has subsided, the body’s physiology returns to its normal state.¹²

In trying to trace the evolution of love, I thought it would be useful to offer a formal definition of the term. I’ve always liked Harry Stack Sullivan’s formulation:

When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one’s own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. So far as I know, under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the word.¹³

Philosophers and other scholars have identified a number of different forms and manifestations love takes. Our focus here will be more narrow. We are interested in the origins of this most common of emotions, and how the various forms love takes may have stemmed from common roots. Many researchers look to the utility of love, its usefulness in the establishment and maintenance of reproductively-advantageous relationships. To that end, important research has centered around maternal affection. And, according to some researchers, romantic love has stemmed from this.

A researcher who has done extensive work on the origins of love stresses that it is an adaptive behavior. He sees the following purposes for it:

• displaying reproductively relevant resources;

• providing sexual access;

• signaling sexual fidelity;

• providing psychological and emotional resources;

• promoting relationship exclusivity through mate guarding;

• displaying commitment – love as a commitment device;

• promoting actions that lead to successful reproductive outcomes; and

• providing signals of parental investment.¹⁴

As much as it may offend the sensibilities of some of the more sentimental among us, it must be said that love evolved primarily because it facilitated the biological success of our genus. It worked. This is not to say that the growth of human intelligence simplified matters related to love. In fact, the opposite has tended to be the case. In the same fashion that humans have complicated their sexuality, the human mind has made the various aspects of love tremendously complex.

Anger, as we saw above in connection to fear, appears to have emerged in the course of animal evolution as a device for winning conflicts. Passivity often meant death. Conflict resolution in humans appears to follow a similar pattern. A trio of evolutionary psychologists has studied anger’s roots, saying that from an evolutionary standpoint anger was a logical response to certain social interactions. In the social networks in which humans evolved there were numerous occasions where conflict occurred. Selection pressures rewarded both cooperation and aggression. Evolutionary biologists note that anger and aggression are common in many other species, and humans are heirs to this tendency. Anger is a form of what the authors call social negotiation. There are times when anger produces benefits in such negotiation, particularly when one party to the negotiation believes they are not receiving a fair trade-off in whatever exchange is occurring. Anger becomes a tactic for (trying to) rectify the situation.¹⁵

Some researchers emphasize, by the way, that anger and hatred are not the same emotion, and that they serve different adaptational purposes. As one research team explains it, anger’s chief purpose is to “bargain for better treatment”. Hatred’s objective, on the other hand, is meant to neutralize a specific target that has inflicted perceived harm on the hater. The researchers identify three methods by which hatred is expressed: Distancing, which can mean simply removing one’s self from the hated person (either by removing one’s self from them or, if possible, exiling the one who is hated), stripping the hated person of power, or killing the person. Depowering and killing of course carry risks, since they invite possible retaliation or negative sanctions from the group.¹⁶

In fact, it appears that all of the major emotions emerged because they either facilitated individual survival, facilitated group solidarity, increased reproductive potential, or some combination of these factors. Happiness, for example, is useful in social bonding. Grief, which varies according to the personal significance to the grieving person of the individual or situation being mourned, appears to have diverse origins and functions. Sorrow can be a signal to other members of the group to rally to the side of the person going through it. The point is that these emotions are not arbitrary. They serve a function. They evolved in the more advanced animals and find their most complex expression in Homo sapiens sapiens. In the next volumes of this work, we will see again and again how emotions have affected every aspect of human life, have helped shape every historical event, have been at the heart of our religions, our arts, our politics, our economies, and our relationships with the natural world.

Neural Correlates of Emotion

For many years most researchers have believed the limbic system of the brain is the chief region that regulates emotional responses.  A number of researchers, however, reject the idea that the term limbic system is descriptively useful. One critic of the limbic system concept arrives at the following conclusion:

Within vertebrates, the overall brain plan is highly conserved, though differences in size and complexity also exist. The forebrain differs the most between mammals and other vertebrates, though the old notion that the evolution of mammals led to radical changes such that new forebrain structures were added has not held up. Thus, the idea that mammalian evolution is characterized by the addition of a limbic system (devoted to emotion) and a neocortex (devoted to cognition) is flawed.¹⁷

There is a controversy among neurologists as to whether there are unique and distinctive brain regions that process individual emotions or whether a variety of emotions are processed in a common brain region. A group of researchers looking at how the eyes process emotion-stimulating stimuli (in this study, visual elements that provoke anger, happiness, fear, or sadness) found that there seems to be a common network that supports  their processing. The researchers make it clear that there might be subnetworks within the larger network that handle individual emotional responses, or there may be other factors at work which have not yet been determined.¹⁸

A pair of researchers has amassed evidence that three interacting brain systems, functioning hierarchically, generate, perceive, and regulate emotions. These systems appraise situations, an appraisal that requires more processing for some situations than others. These appraisals effect changes to a person’s physical state. The perception of one’s emotions involves, in their words, “a multi-stage interoceptive/somatosensory process by which these body state patterns are detected and assigned conceptual emotional meaning”. Ultimately, regulation involves multiple processes, including the working memory and assessment of the situation appraisal mechanism.¹⁹

Finally, two major students of emotion, sum up their appraisal:

Why do we do anything at all, let alone in a consistent way that is recognizable to all who know us well? It is our primary-process psychobehavioral abilities, our prime movers, that arise from our subcortical brain’s primary emotional action systems that move us out of our resting state into coherent behavior patterns, which if adequately understood could be seen as our endophenotype’s [Endophenotype: an internal trait with genetic roots, such as brain function] optimal ways of trying to cope with life challenges, with further refinements being added by our learning mechanisms and thereby individual memories.²⁰

The Nature of Emotional Attachment

When I speak of emotional attachment, I am talking about people who have a relationship with each other based on some level of affection, people who generally care about each other, and who trust each other to varying degrees. People, of course, may have emotional attachment to objects or artistic works or publicly-known individuals, but here I am speaking about what might be called mutuality of feeling. I hasten to point out that the degree of mutual feeling may be vastly different, and some parties to a relationship might feel very different levels of emotional engagement.

In a sense, a human society consists of clusters of very intense relationships (families, friendships, in-groups in general), groups in which the bonds of emotional attachment are very strong. None of these clusters has any direct knowledge of most of the others. The only relationship most of these clusters have with each other is an abstract sense of empathy. Most humans can understand, in varying degrees, what it is like to be in an emotionally-bound group.

Emotional attachment begins, for most people, in infancy. Scientists have ascertained that the principal (not necessarily only) evolutionary purpose of mother-child attachment was to ensure the safety of infants. Enlarging on this, we might say that as a general rule, the greater the maternal attention to newborns, the more likely it was that the newborns would survive. Hence maternal love and care were reproductively advantageous.

There are researchers who argue that there are additional reasons that maternal-infant attachment emerged. One of them argues that it was significant in promoting cultural evolution. He also contends that it was a significant factor in gene culture co-evolution.²¹ (GC co-evolution is the idea that human biological evolution brought forth human culture, and that human culture in turn affected the course of human evolution.) Another researcher, a psychiatrist, points out that attachment is only one aspect of child raising, and is not what is meant by the term “bonding”, which she sees as misleading. After presenting extensive evidence, her first conclusion is perhaps her most significant: “The quality of the infant-parent attachment is a powerful predictor of a child’s later social and emotional outcome.” Many emotional problems arise in children when their caregivers are insensitive, inconsistent, atypical, or engage in outright rejection. Levels of psychopathology in adolescents can often be traced to such negative care.²²

Emotion in Everyday and Public Life

There is, I believe, a false dichotomy between the terms intellect and emotion. Supposedly, humans, in any given situation, are either guided completely by rational thought or passionate, impulsive feeling. In truth, in my view there is an emotional component to our intellect. We choose, after all, to give priority to some issues we care about over others, we choose (when adults) what to read or otherwise study by emotional preference. We often take into account what the emotional impact of our decisions will have on others. We choose careers (if we are fortunate) in fields we are emotionally drawn to. Our emotions, in turn, may have a rational basis. We may be justifiably angry at injustice. We may be saddened by that which is genuinely grievous. We may feel exhilarated by great music or a wonderful physical experience. Emotion in these instances would be a rational response. Indeed, we can legitimately say that those who are completely emotionless are suffering from a serious mental illness.

The problem, as I see it, is when emotional responses are dominant in every situation, and whenever crucial life decisions are based solely (or just predominantly) on emotion. Moreover, emotional responses can, if carried to the extreme, result in terrible violence and/or self-harm. Emotions can so overwhelm an individual that these feelings come to color and dominate every aspect of the person’s life. Grief can destroy the will to live. Chronic anger can have disastrous effects on health. A person carried away by feelings they believe to be love can make promises they have no ability to keep. Words said in momentary rage can lead to a lifetime of damage. The examples are, unfortunately, almost endless.

Even more threatening, in my view, is the way emotion is expressed and responded to in the public sphere. Demagogues routinely appeal to fear and hatred. Mobs, driven by  fierce, unyielding emotion, riot and kill. Hatred and terror in war lead to horrible atrocities. False declarations of love and sympathy, uttered by those who have mastered the dark arts of emotional manipulation, lead people to follow charlatans and false prophets. Rational debate is drowned out by simplistic, childish, emotion-based “arguments”. All of these things have occurred again and again in human societies throughout the world. Yes, emotion is an intrinsic part of human beings and the human story, emotions which exist in the first place because they were useful from an evolutionary standpoint. But in the end—and this may be an unpopular opinion—thinking must take priority over feeling. Thinking and feeling are both necessary. But a society shaped primarily by emotion will ultimately lead to a dead end, one that no appeals to fear or anger or hatred can overcome.

1.   https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11040893_What_is_emotion

2.  Damasio, Antonio. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace, p. 42

3.   Damasio, p. 282

4.  Barrett, L. F., Niedenthal, P. M., & Winkielman, P. (Eds.). (2005). Emotion and consciousness. The Guilford Press pp. 151-152

5.   Lane, Richard D., and Lynn Nadel, editors. Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion. Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 3

6.   Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion, p. 15

7.   Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion, pp. 24-25

8.   Izard CE. Emotion theory and research: highlights, unanswered questions, and emerging issues. Annu Rev Psychol. 2009;60:1-25. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163539. PMID: 18729725; PMCID: PMC2723854.

9.  Barrett, Lisa Feldman. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (pp. 56-57). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

10.  Joseph E. LeDoux; As soon as there was life, there was danger: the deep history of survival behaviours and the shallower history of consciousness. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 14 February 2022; 377 (1844): 20210292. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0292

11. O'Connell, Katherine & Rhoads, Shawn & Marsh, Abigail. (2024). Fear: An Evolutionary Perspective on Its Biological, Behavioral, and Communicative Features. 1093/oxfordhb/9780197544754.013.25.

12.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK541120/

13.  Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v25i1.2695

Vol. 25, No. 1 · July 2023 © 2023 Author

14.  https://labs.la.utexas.edu/buss/files/2021/08/LoveinHumans.pdf

15.  Sell A, Tooby J, Cosmides L. Formidability and the logic of human anger. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Sep 1;106(35):15073-8. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0904312106. Epub 2009 Aug 3. PMID: 19666613; PMCID: PMC2736438.

16.  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513825001254

17. LeDoux JE. Evolution of human emotion: a view through fear. Prog Brain Res. 2012;195:431-42. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-444-53860-4.00021-0. PMID: 22230640;

PMCID: PMC3600914.

18. Jastorff J, Huang YA, Giese MA, Vandenbulcke M. Common neural correlates of emotion perception in humans. Hum Brain Mapp. 2015 Oct;36(10):4184-201. doi: 10.1002/hbm.22910. Epub 2015 Jul 28. PMID: 26219630; PMCID: PMC6869080.

19. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763415002https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763415002031031

20.  Davis, Kenneth L.; Panksepp, Jaak. The Emotional Foundations of Personality: A Neurobiological and Evolutionary Approach (p. 10). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

21.  Granqvist P. Attachment, culture, and gene-culture co-evolution: expanding the evolutionary toolbox of attachment theory. Attach Hum Dev. 2021 Feb;23(1):90-113. doi: 10.1080/14616734.2019.1709086. Epub 2020 Jan 2. PMID: 31894723.

22.   Benoit D. Infant-parent attachment: Definition, types, antecedents, measurement and outcome. Paediatr Child Health. 2004 Oct;9(8):541-545. doi: 10.1093/pch/9.8.541. PMID: 19680481; PMCID: PMC2724160.

 

Reasoning

Reasoning is the ability to take pieces of relevant information and mentally put them together to reach a logically defensible conclusion, defensible at least to those doing the reasoning. Reasoning can be used to confirm conclusions already arrived at or to create new conclusions, conclusions which are a synthesis of existing information. Reasoning, outside of mathematics, does not necessarily create a conclusion that is unassailable. It creates a conclusion that is, until superseding evidence or more logical propositions are introduced, at least plausible. Even if new evidence is produced, there is no guarantee that this conclusion will change. In mathematics, reasoning is based on the ability to arrange propositions in a logically proper sequence in order to arrive at a conclusion that is considered the only one possible. We will see that human reasoning outside the realm of mathematics is often deeply flawed and devoid of logical consistency. Moreover, we will consider the hypothesis that reasoning isn’t so much about arriving at a conclusion as it is justifying the preferences of those doing the reasoning.

Evolutionary Origins and Functions of Reasoning

It could be fairly said that the deep origins of reasoning lie with the need to deal with the issues and problems with which our genus is typically confronted. In our earliest ancestors, these issues and problems were very often matters of life or death. It was therefore reproductively advantageous for a line of advanced primates to be able to analyze situations and piece together a plan of action. An American psychologist, introducing a paper on the subject, put it this way:

First, solving problems of social competition and cooperation have direct impact on survival rates and reproductive success. Second, the social structure that evolved from this pressure is the dominance hierarchy. Third, primates that live in large groups with complex dominance hierarchies also show greater neocortical development, and concomitantly greater cognitive capacity. These facts suggest that the necessity of reasoning effectively about dominance hierarchies left an indelible mark on primate reasoning architectures, including that of humans.¹

Natural selection favored reasoning. The reasons for this have not been fully ascertained. Two philosophers who have studied reasoning in depth argue that the principle function of reasoning “is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade”. This, they contend, made reasoning adaptively useful in settings, such as human social groups, where verbal communication is so vital. They stress that reasoning is not principally concerned with finding the truth of a matter. It is, rather, a way for the people making an argument to defend their opinion and to persuade others. It produces decisions that can be justified easily, but not necessarily the best decisions. And sometimes reasoning works backwards: it can be used to support a conclusion that has already been made.²

Another researcher, reacting to this work, put forth the hypothesis that reasoning emerged as a way of fostering unity of outlook within social groups. In this view, it was a way of getting everyone on the same page, so to speak. As the author put it, “It helped our ancestors share intentions, collaborate more successfully—and thereby propel a social species toward ultrasociality.”³

If we are looking for specific neural correlates of reasoning, we face challenges. The opinion among some researchers is that reasoning can take place in multiple ways and involve a very wide array of interacting brain processes. A researcher in Spain has noted that even the most sophisticated tests, done with the most advanced equipment, have been unable to find a specific brain location in which reasoning takes place.⁴

There are scientists investigating hypotheses that the hemispheres of the brain have distinct functions in the reasoning process. One hypothesis is that the left hemisphere excels at abstract reasoning and the right hemisphere draws more on emotional memories in its reasoning process. Another hypothesis argues that if the right hemisphere fails to retrieve emotional experiences, the left hemisphere applies rules of logic.⁵

There is a distinction between inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is based on gathering evidence and observations. This evidence and these observations are used to form a hypothesis. Deductive reasoning is based on a broad principle which is used to reach a conclusion, a conclusion the accuracy of which is dependent on the broad principle’s validity. We might suppose that an individual using inductive reasoning would, upon encountering a situation, note various aspects of it, perhaps drawing on previous experiences and knowledge, and try to piece together an explanation of the situation. A person relying on deductive reasoning might immediately categorize a situation, and evaluate the events being encountered within the context of that category. We should bear in mind that there may be considerable overlap in these methods of reasoning, and that aspects of both of them may be employed by individuals assessing situations.

Common Limitations and Errors in Human Reasoning

Many flaws are common in human reasoning. If people misperceive an event (such as mistaking a comet or meteor trail for an alien invader) their reasoning process will be based on false premises. Another example of a false premise is seeing those who have been denied any education, and reasoning that such people are naturally intellectually inferior. Humans may possess severely limited information, which can hamper their ability to assess a situation. As we will see in greater detail elsewhere, errors inherent in the physiology of the brain can mislead humans profoundly. Emotional issues can arise, clouding our judgment, and leading us toward a conclusion that we may find desirable rather than one which fits available facts. We might “cherry pick” information, choosing only those facts which bolster our preferences or listening only to those with whom we agree. (This is called confirmation bias.) In short, humans tend to have cognitive biases that affect their ability to reason accurately. There are many examples of how these biases operate and manifest themselves. Two researchers in cognitive neuroscience offer the following comprehensive definition:

Cognitive biases are systematic cognitive dispositions or inclinations in human thinking and reasoning that often do not comply with the tenets of logic, probability reasoning, and plausibility. These intuitive and subconscious tendencies are at the basis of human judgment, decision making, and the resulting behavior. Psychological frameworks consider biases as resulting from the use of (inappropriate) cognitive heuristics that people apply to deal with data-limitations, from information processing limitations, or from a lack of expertise. Neuro-evolutionary frameworks provide a more profound explanation of biases as originating from the inherent design characteristics of our brain as a neural network that was primarily developed to perform basic physical, perceptual and motor functions, and which also had to promote the survival of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.⁶

We are reminded here, once again, that the brain evolved to keep us alive long enough to share our genetic material. Cognitive biases are apparently a mechanism for facilitating this purpose. It’s as if our minds seek to reassure us that our judgment of a situation is accurate. Such biases also help us validate our decisions. The number of such biases uncovered by researchers is formidable. Some lists contain more than one hundred.

Heuristics and Reasoning

By heuristics we mean, basically, the mental short cuts people use to make decisions. Many observers simply call them “rules of thumb” (to use an English-language idiom). They are not truly rigorous in terms of logic but they seem to be ubiquitous in human life. There is a debate among those who research reasoning about whether humans reason in a rational way. Many researchers argue that heuristics cause people to come to irrational decisions. There are, however, those who dissent from this analysis. A professor of philosophy and history maintains that people are often being held to an abstract ideal of reasoning that can’t be realized in actual situations. Heuristic methods, he argues, can lead to practical, real life conclusions, and for those untrained in the fine points of epistemic reasoning [the study of the use of logical rules to analyze arguments and beliefs] heuristic reasoning is highly useful. He puts it directly:

1. Heuristic reasoning often maximizes accuracy for limited reasoners, especially in information-rich environments.

2. Maximizing accuracy is the overriding rational good in these reasoning contexts; so

3. Heuristic reasoning often maximizes rationality for limited reasoners.⁷

Occam’s Razor as a Reasoning Technique

Occam’s (or Ockham’s) Razor is associated with Late Medieval English philosopher William of Ockham (c.1287-1347). It is, to oversimplify it, a sort of test that can be applied to conflicting explanations of events. The principle behind it is that the simplest explanation of an event (or to be more precise, the explanation with the fewest elements) tends to be the truth. This makes it powerfully appealing to most people. A group of scientists studying human decision-making have explored why people tend to prefer simplicity when explaining the causes of events. According to their research, this preference is not cultural. As they put it:

…people tend to use simplicity preferences when making decisions, and…these preferences do not seem to be simply consequences of learning specific tasks but rather an inherent part of how we interpret uncertain information. This tendency has important implications for the kinds of computations our brains must use to solve these kinds of tasks…

They go on to explain that humans seem to focus on those elements of a situation which are easiest to explain, and those which seem to encompass the largest number of its elements.⁸

Belief Perseverance

Do humans generally change their conclusions based on facts they did not originally have? If human reasoning relies on the gathering of facts, we would imagine that additional (or even contradictory) information might affect that reasoning and the conclusions derived from it. But the research on this shows that this is not generally the case. Belief perseverance is the tendency most humans have to cling to their initial beliefs, even in the face of strong evidence against those beliefs.⁹ Now, it should be said that there is some evidence that educated psychology study volunteers are amenable to changing their views when presented with persuasive evidence.¹⁰ I have to wonder, however, how representative of the general population such people are.

Humans reason at a level of which no other animal is capable. But outside the realms of pure logic, peer-reviewed science, and mathematics, that reasoning is flawed, deeply imperfect, a tool of persuasion, and a method of fostering group unity. The human brain seems to instinctively seek out confirmatory evidence, and this can lead not only to erroneous but even disastrous outcomes. Yet, in everyday life, basic human reasoning can be useful in limited contexts. Our reasoning is permeated with emotional influences, specifically the desire for good outcomes. In fact, emotion seems to color every aspect of the human mind and influence every part of our behavior, even when we believe we are being completely “objective” (however that term is defined). It is to the vast subject of human emotion that we now turn. In doing so, we will encounter aspects of ourselves which may be difficult for us to acknowledge, but which are nonetheless part of the basic foundation of who we are as human beings.

 

1.   https://www.denisecummins.com/uploads/1/1/8/2/11828927/cumminsmm1996pdf.pdf

2.   http://www.dan.sperber.fr/wpcontent/uploads/2009/10/MercierSperber

      Whydohumansreason.pdf

3.    https://www.academia.edu/115215551/Why_we_reason_intention_alignment_

and_the_genesis_of_human_rationality

4.   https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4408754/#sec3

5.   https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/782167

6.   https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/cognitive-bias

7.   https://philpapers.org/archive/KARRWH.pdf

8.   https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9882019/

9.   https://research.com/education/why-facts-dont-change-our-mind#2

10. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103118304529?via%3Dihub

"Ordinary" Consciousness

If the anatomy of a human brain is unremarkable, if its physiology is operating within “normal” limits, if it is awake, not under the influence of intoxicants (or excessive stimulants) of any kind, functioning under “normal” conditions, and if it displays a particular electrochemical balance, we would say that the human in question is experiencing “ordinary” consciousness. I put the words ordinary and normal in quotation marks because the words themselves are so ambiguous and the definitions of them so open to individual interpretation.

Broadly speaking, when we say a human brain is operating “normally”, it is operating in such a way as to allow a human to perceive enough of reality to avoid dangerous stimuli, navigate their way through spacetime, recognize and interact with others, and generally interpret the world in a way that seems to be consistent with the human definition of reality. This is the “window” through which a human perceives the physical and social world, the window through which we experience our mediated contact with the free-standing reality.  It is this somewhat precarious (and exceedingly complex) physiological and electrochemical state that creates what humans call “ordinary” experience or “ordinary” consciousness. Human civilization has been created by humans who were in some approximation of this state. It is what most humans would consider an everyday experience. (See the chapter entitled Some (Brief) Comments On the Brain’s Anatomy and Physiology and the chapter entitled The Emergence and Nature of Human Consciousness, Part One: Toward a Definition of Consciousness).

Expanding on this, it may be said that “ordinary” consciousness contributes to the sense that life as one is living it is “normal”, the way “regular” or “ordinary” people live it. This sense of normality, by the way, is one of the consequences of having assimilated a particular culture. A person might think, if they were to put it into words, “I am calm, my mind is essentially unexcited, relatively clear, and I am not in overt physical distress. The life I am surrounded by is utterly mundane, completely ordinary in every way. This is what it’s like to be normal.” Ordinary consciousness, therefore, is not only one of the foundations of human social life and basic human interaction. The sense of normality it provides is also one of the foundations of human personal identity.

This sense of the ordinary also makes many people less conducive to any drastic changes in the routine way of life they experience—it wouldn’t be normal to change things. The introduction of rapid change or extreme novelty threatens the internal equilibrium of a great many people. Further, it can be argued that this sense that one’s own culture is the definition of normal can easily morph into belief in the superiority of one’s culture, and active hostility toward foreign ways of life, which are despised and shunned because they are “abnormal” or “perverse”.

Ordinary consciousness tends to gravitate between focusing on the external world of task completion, social interaction, and perception of surroundings, and the internal world of random mental events, internal narratives, fantasies (either positive or negative) and reveries. It is probable that most people are not focusing 100% of their attention on whatever task is at hand, except in the most pressing circumstances, e.g., life and death situations that demand undivided attention, or in situations in which they are communicating with large numbers of other people.  It is this constant sliding back and forth between inside and outside and the continual mixing of elements from the two that seems to constitute the ordinary internal reality that most people experience. What people call ordinary consciousness is, for most humans, the baseline against which exceptional or extraordinary states of mind may be measured.

In previous chapters we have discussed the nature of consciousness itself, but it would be useful to remind ourselves of how ordinary levels of attentiveness and awareness are maintained:

The exact neuronal connections that modulate alertness, wakefulness, and normal sleep and drowsiness are not well defined. A distinct group of neurons, the reticular formation, is located in the periventricular areas of the midbrain, pons, and medulla. [Note from the NIH: the periventricular area is the area around the ventricles where nerve fibers carry messages from the brain to the body's muscles.] In addition to modulating various interconnecting pathways within the brainstem, this group of neurons relates to the levels of alertness and wakefulness. It is postulated that a diffuse group of neuronal connections emanates from this reticular formation, projecting up the midbrain into the thalamic structures and then on to the cortex. This system is referred to as the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS). The ARAS receives input from all sensory systems, and efferent connections are extensive. It is thought that this system is responsible for modulating alertness and sleep. As such, any interruption of this system could result in alteration in the level of consciousness (or in abnormalities in the sleep cycle).¹

The brain therefore acts to keep a human in equilibrium, keeping the conscious mind sufficiently focused on the outer world that the human in question can function within normal limits.

So of what does a mind in an “ordinary” state go through in a day? A prominent psychologist, the late Robert E. Ornstein (from whom I borrowed the title of this chapter), gave his answer in The Psychology of Consciousness. He stated that the ordinary stream of consciousness was marked by “a mixture of thoughts, fantasies, ideas, and sensations of the external world.” A human encounters objects and other humans (typically), the latter of which have distinctive appearances, voices, and personalities. Humans move through three-dimensional spacetime, regularly manipulating objects, and turning their attention to tasks or communicating with others. He also emphasized that humans seem to make a common mistake: they see their own personal consciousness as “objective reality”.²

Ornstein emphasizes the following aspects of ordinary consciousness:

1.  The senses and the brain reduce the amount of information we receive and (as we have seen) detect only a part of the energies and chemical compounds around us.

2. Ordinary consciousness is heavily interactive and constructive. Humans receive sensory input and unconsciously organize it. This process is called categorization. These categories tend to be limited and less complex than the input the senses are receiving. If the categories are applied to other humans, all the actions of these humans tend to be seen through the lens of these categories.

3. Ordinary consciousness is shifting and fluid, and we tend to focus on any physical need we happen to have at a given moment. It is affected by cultural influences, personal loyalties, family background, personal history, education, particular interests, and many other factors. It can be confined to a narrow area of interest or narrow regions of the world. It can be shaped by the degree to which an individual employs verbal modes of thought as opposed to image-driven modes.

4.  Our consciousness is not a simple passive recorder of external stimuli but is a deeply selective and evolved entity aimed primarily at biological survival. 

5.  Our consciousness grows and develops as our knowledge of the world expands. From the chaotic and unstructured consciousness of infancy, we gradually acquire familiarity with the objects and processes around us, allowing us to form a coherent picture of the reality around us and to gain survival skills.

There are some people, often artists of various kinds, who see ordinary consciousness as a barrier to unconventional thought. The writer Virginia Wolff put it this way:

Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions – trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.⁴

Brain Sludge

The curious phrase brain sludge is my way of rephrasing the important fact that Virginia Wolff so elegantly expressed above: much of what our ordinary, everyday consciousness feeds us is a random hodge-podge of fleeting blurry images, spontaneous inner “sounds” (either voices, music, or nature sounds), temporary bursts of emotion, wordless impulses, irrelevant, surprising, painful, or long-lost memories, imaginary scenarios (sometimes violent or erotic), snippets of verbal thought, and strange mixtures of all of these phenomena. This sludge comprises the background of our ordinary waking life. Too many of us consider the contents of this sludgy river to be important, especially if we have had strange or disturbing thoughts. Almost none of them are. It is the conscious brain’s static. When we concentrate on some matter at hand, this sludge is pushed off to the side, so to speak, but it always has the potential to interfere with more necessary tasks. It can interrupt our reading, invade our mealtimes, interfere with our rest, and distract us from our work (which, admittedly, is not always a bad thing). The river of brain sludge has been with us our entire lives. It is the most prominent feature of our consciousness in some ways. So when we consider William James’s formulation “the stream of thought”, we need to remember that much, or even most of that stream, is clogged with sludge.

In the broadest sense, the whole of our past experiences is present at any given moment, but particular aspects of that experience take precedence. And in that present moment in our “ordinary” consciousness, there are more realities unfolding and expressing themselves than we are capable of knowing or understanding. When we realize this, we realize there is nothing “ordinary” about our consciousness at all.

 

 1.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK380/

2.  Ornstein, Robert. The Psychology of Consciousness. New York: Penguin Books, 1984, p. 32.

3.  Ornstein, pp. 32-62

4.  https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10733324-examine-for-a-moment-an-ordinary-mind-on-an-ordinary

 

 

 

Intelligence

 Humans, the most numerous large land animal on Earth, exercise an extensive but limited dominance over the surface of the planet’s crust. In the two million or so years in which their genus has existed, they have spread over the Earth’s continents, and have adapted to an astounding array of different environments. The evolution of Homo Sapiens some 250,000-300,000 ybp saw a vast expansion of human knowledge and skills, an expansion which has made humans—at least temporarily—the most advanced species in the biosphere. Through means of society and culture, humans have passed what they have learned (or think they have learned) to those born after them.

The human ability to learn is extraordinary, as we have just seen. Many factors, of course, affect this ability. Key among these is intelligence, one of the more complex subjects in human psychology. It is human intelligence that has given our species the ultimate advantage over the rest of Kingdom Animalia. But the definition of this trait, and the study of how individual humans come to possess it, are areas riven by disputes.

The Many Definitions of Intelligence

In its broadest definition, intelligence might be thought of as the ability to understand a situation, recognize challenges and problems that may be associated with that situation, and take appropriate action in a timely manner to deal with them. (That appropriate action can sometimes be to do nothing.) A team of brain researchers has given a more formal definition:

…‘intelligence’ can be understood as mental or behavioural flexibility or the ability of an organism to solve problems occurring in its natural and social environment, culminating in the appearance of novel solutions that are not part of the animal's normal repertoire. This includes forms of associative learning and memory formation, behavioural flexibility and innovation rate, as well as abilities requiring abstract thinking, concept formation and insight.¹

It should be noted immediately that there is no universally accepted definition of intelligence. (One indefatigable researcher has found no fewer than 71 different definitions.)² A prominent neuroscientist has noted that most definitions center around the concept of problem solving. As he puts it, “More complex problems require higher levels of intelligence. For example, it requires more intelligence to be able to solve differential equations than simply to be able to add two single-digit numbers.”³  It should also be noted that the definition of intelligence is not limited solely to the ability to master academic subjects. Intelligence has much broader applications.

In 1983 the American psychologist Howard Gardner published his theory of multiple intelligences. Gardner saw nine specialized forms of intelligence, or areas in which different sets of intellectual skills were required. They are as follows:

Verbal-linguistic intelligence

Logical-mathematical intelligence

Spatial-visual intelligence (the ability to think in pictures and visualize possibilities)

Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (particular to athletics)

Musical intelligences

Interpersonal intelligence (the ability to relate effectively to others)

Intrapersonal (self-examination)

Naturalist intelligence (recognizing and categorizing elements of the natural world)

Existential intelligence (the ability to think about “big” issues)⁴

Gardner’s ideas have come under criticism from many sources. Some see Gardner’s categories as simply a list of different talents people have with the word “intelligence” tied to them. Others contend that Gardner’s ideas are not truly scientific but are rather a neuromyth. One critic defines the term neuromyth as “a commonly accepted but unscientific claim about brain function.”⁵ Gardner’s work, in her view, was based on an understanding of the brain’s physiology that has been superseded, and that his hypothesis is not supported by empirical data.

Gardner’s MI theory was not a neuromyth initially because it was based on theories of the 1980s of brain modularity for cognition, and few researchers then were concerned by the lack of validating brain studies. However, in the past 40 years neuroscience research has shown that the brain is not organized in separate modules dedicated to specific forms of cognition.⁶

I think it would therefore be fair to say that Gardner identified various ways that intelligence is manifested rather than distinct kinds of intelligence that arise from areas of the brain dedicated to these manifestations.

There is a distinction between crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence. This idea was first formulated by the psychologist Raymond Cattell in 1943. To put it succinctly, crystallized intelligence is the sum of what one has learned and one’s ability to bring this knowledge to bear when required. Fluid intelligence is the ability to deal with novel problems and new situations, situations in which previously learned information cannot be applied. In Cattel’s view, crystallized intelligence can be increased throughout adult life (unless senescence ends this accumulation of knowledge) while fluid intelligence is most critical in childhood and adolescence and plateaus in young adulthood.⁷

Neural Correlates of Intelligence

A great deal of research has been done to determine which areas of the human brain are most closely associated with intelligence. Two brain researchers in the UK, referring to the contention “that the cognitive basis of intelligence is the ability to make fluid or creative analogical relationships between distantly related concepts or pieces of information”⁸, decided to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine subjects engaged in tasks requiring the ability to make analogies. Their findings:

An analysis using covariates determined per subject by analogical depth revealed significant bilateral neural activations in the superior, inferior, and middle frontal gyri and in the anterior cingulate/paracingulate cortex. These frontal areas have been previously associated with reasoning tasks involving inductive syllogisms, syntactic hierarchies, and linguistic creativity.⁹

In 2009, a team of neurologists from UCLA published an overview of the ways in which advanced scanning technologies can be used to ascertain intelligence levels in humans. Based on their wide-ranging, multi-sourced research, they attempted to identify those anatomical features of the brain that affect the level of an individual’s intelligence. These scientists stressed that what they were observing were correlations, and that conclusions about the relationship between the brain’s anatomy and human intelligence remain speculative. With these caveats in mind, what factors and brain regions may have an influence on intelligence? One of these is overall brain volume, with important reservations. It is the authors’ opinion that “increased global brain volumes observed in more intelligent individuals may be accounted for by selectively enlarged volumes in brain regions especially relevant for higher cognitive function”.¹⁰ Other regions and factors include the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes, the hippocampus, the cerebellum, significant volumes of gray matter (particularly in the lateral and medial frontal cortex), cortical thickness, and the thickness of the corpus callosum.¹¹

General Indicators of Intelligence

The rapidity, accuracy, and/or scope of one’s situational awareness, comprehension, knowledge base, and logical abilities are measurable aspects of intelligence, although the methods used to measure them are sometimes controversial. (This discussion is not the place to examine the controversies over these measures.) As we saw, Gardner’s neuromyth gives us an overview of the ways in which humans exhibit intelligence. Looking more deeply, we can say that the ability of a human brain to deal with abstract ideas and the language needed to express them, the ability to command language in general and use it effectively, the ability to reasonably predict immediate outcomes of actions, the ability to apply reason and precedent to novel or unexpected situations, the ability to conceive of possible realities and assess the degree of their probability, the ability to focus on the most salient aspects of a situation or problem, and the ability to adapt quickly to a given set of circumstances are, I think, the foundations of our intellectual prowess.

Overall, the meta-talent of the human species is, as I have already said, its adaptability. Not all individuals will display this quality, but as a collectivity, our ability to change with changing circumstances has been our most vital survival asset. Human intelligence gives us a vast superiority over most living things. Humans, as a group, can often change in something very close to real time (when measured in geological terms). Most living things can only change in evolutionary time, meaning that the processes of natural selection and genetic drift must act with their characteristic slowness to allow them to adapt. Moreover, human intelligence can deal with an impressive variety of challenges. As we have seen, many animals exhibit intelligence. But it is the range and depth of human intelligence that has given us our limited power over the biosphere.

Intelligence, Both Heritable and Malleable

In Volume One (p. 433) we saw there is evidence that, to a degree, intelligence is heritable. The fact of intelligence’s heritability is not really in question, but rather the degree to which it is heritable and the role of environmental/cultural factors in the shaping of intellect. Two neuroscientists researching this issue have arrived at a conclusion that I think warrants attention. They contend that intelligence is the result of the interaction of genetic and environmental factors.

The high heritability of intelligence could have emerged from independent genetic effects, while its high malleability could have arisen from independent environmental effects. However, in isolation, these possibilities have little explanatory value. Accordingly, since intelligence is demonstrably malleable, independent genetic effects cannot possibly run the show. Likewise, since intelligence is demonstrably heritable, independent environmental effects cannot possibly run the show. This leads us to the conclusion that gene-environment interplay is the ring master. [My emphasis.]While seemingly straight-forward, this conclusion has been sublimated by methodological/conceptual biases (the first dibs to genetics) and its elusive nature (the hidden iceberg of interactions). Here, we have presented evidence that the GE solution is theoretically and empirically sound, even though at first glance it seems improbable. Paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes’ maxim: since we have eliminated the now implausible options, whatever remains, however well hidden, must be the truth (or at least a closer approximation).¹²

There has been extensive research done on the degree of genetic influence on intelligence, and although research methodologies have been improved, there is still no definitive answer to the (perhaps meaningless) question, “What is the exact percentage of intelligence accounted for by genetic influences?” A pair of scientists in the UK have looked deeply at this issue, and they report the following:

A.  The degree of heritability is not fixed, but rather increases in a linear fashion over time. It rises from about 20% in infancy to 60% in adulthood. What seems to account for this is something known as genetic amplification. This is to say that genetic propensities in children are amplified by the ways in which these children arrange and organize their environment. The implication, in my view, is that as people mature, and the ways in which they arrange their environments become more elaborate, the more indicative of their genetic inheritance these arrangements become.

B. Genetic differences in intelligence are largely attributable to those genes that influence cognitive abilities such as vocabulary, memory, and the brain’s executive functions. These genes display a high level of pleiotropy [when a single gene can have multiple effects].

C.  Assortative mating has a major impact on intelligence levels. Assortative mating is the tendency of people to marry and mate with people who are similar to them. On the scale in which 0.00 equals no correlation and 1.00 equals absolute correlation, assortative mating for intelligence is about 0.40 for intelligence generally and about 0.50 for verbal intelligence. (By way of comparison, the correlation for height and weight is about 0.20.) Interestingly, there is about a 0.60 correlation for years of education. Further, inbreeding has a negative effect on intelligence.¹³

If, indeed, environmental factors play a role in intelligence, what factors seem to be the most significant ones? A team of medical researchers in India, after studying a large sample of children, came to these conclusions:

In the present study, we found that various environmental factors such as place of residence, physical exercise, family income, parents' occupation and education influence the IQ of a child to a great extent. Hence, a child must be provided with an optimal environment to be able to develop to his/her full genetic potential.¹⁴

Research indicates that adequate early childhood nutrition is an important factor in good cognitive development.¹⁵ The educational level of parents is a factor in their children’s cognitive development.¹⁶ Family stability is also key. A Princeton University study indicates that stability is a major factor in cognitive development. Interestingly, an unstable two parent home is not as good in this regard as a stable single-parent home.¹⁷

It should also be noted that research finds no significant difference between the intelligence of women and that of men. Further, the assertion that one “race” (a specious term, in my view) is naturally intellectually superior to others, is an idea that finds no broad scientific support.¹⁸ And it bears repeating that the assertion that humans “only use 10% of their brain” is complete nonsense.

The Critical Junctures in the Rise of Human Intelligence

In tracing the evolution of the anatomically modern human, the evolution of the human brain, and the rise and manifestations of human consciousness, we have largely traced the rise of human intelligence. Those studying these phenomena have looked for certain critical junctures in the history of intellect’s development. We have already come across Merlin Donald’s hypothesis about the significance of self-triggered recall and rehearsal loop in the evolution of memory (pp. 617-618). As I have already noted, tool making gave a selective advantage to imaginative thinking. Human social life’s increasing complexity worked in a reciprocal way with the evolution of the brain, and the advent of gestural and vocal communication gave a strong selective advantage to those who mastered these skills. We can say that the transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens (taking into account the crucial offshoot from erectus of Homo heidelbergensis, the African variant of which might be the true precursor to sapiens) was the biggest juncture of all in the development of human intelligence. We face the world with, essentially, the same sensory and cognitive apparatus with which a Homo sapiens tribe in prehistoric Ethiopia or southern Africa faced it.

Human intelligence was also affected by the oral history and storyteller traditions, which put a premium on training the memory, and the rise of written symbols and the storage of information outside of the human body. Research indicates that reading and writing use existing brain structures, repurposing them. Stanislas Dehaene explains this:

…new cultural inventions such as writing are only possible inasmuch as they fit within our preexisting brain architecture. Each cultural object must find its neuronal niche—a set of circuits that are sufficiently close to the required function and sufficiently plastic to be partially “recycled.” The theory stipulates that cultural inventions always involve the recycling of older cerebral structures that originally were selected by evolution to address very different problems but manage, more or less successfully, to shift toward a novel cultural use.

How can this view explain why all readers possess a specialized and reproducibly located area for a recent cultural invention? The idea is that the act of reading is tightly constrained by the preexisting brain architectures for language and vision. The human brain is subject to strong anatomical and connectional constraints inherited from its evolution, and the crossing of these multiple constraints implies that reading acquisition is channeled to an essentially unique circuit.¹⁹

The evidence shows that even under the constraints imposed by the need to repurpose existing brain anatomy, reading can have a major impact on intelligence. Research on identical twins has revealed that reading improves both verbal and non-verbal cognitive abilities in children.²⁰

Consequences of Intelligence

Our intelligence, as noted, has allowed us to dominate the other animal species, with consequences that are, in the long run, unpredictable. As we will examine more closely in the next volume of this work, human intelligence has created amazingly complex societies and cultures. But these societies and cultures also, almost paradoxically, display the limits and fallibility of human intelligence. Humans have created social and cultural entities that are utterly beyond their ability to fully understand. Individual humans very often find themselves struggling to navigate life in such societies, often overwhelmed by the contradictions and randomness they encounter. We have unintentionally created situations that may be beyond our ability to stabilize or correct. It is the sense among some of us that we will require a non-human intelligence to pull us out of these difficult situations that has given rise to machine “intelligence”—a move which might be even more dangerous than the situations the machines have been devised to rectify.

Moreover, humans have often tended to overestimate their own intelligence. This has led many of them to have an unwarranted sense of certainty. Others have been held back by deficiencies in their intellect, and have often been unfairly dealt with by those taking advantage of these deficiencies. Both in evolution and in everyday human life, intelligence is a survival advantage.

But our intelligence is not absolute, and everywhere we turn, we run into its limits. One of the ways the human mind tries to find these limits and gain control of complex situations is through the processes of reasoning. It is to the operations of reasoning we now turn, mindful that even the most patiently reasoned chains of thought can lead us in unexpected directions—or even dead ends.

1.   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4685590/

2.   https://calculemus.org/lect/08szt-intel/materialy/Definitions%20of%20Intelligence.html

3.  Lee, Daeyeol. Birth of Intelligence: From RNA to Artificial Intelligence (p. 4). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition

4.    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053811905000819

5.    https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1217288/full

6.    https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1217288/full

7.    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11595727/

8.    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053811905000819

9.    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053811905000819

10.  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2770698/

11.  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2770698/

12.  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5754247/

13.  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4270739/

14.  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5479093/

15.  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8839299/

16.  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289621000817

17. “Family Structure and Stability Effects on Child Cognitive Performance”. Terry-Ann Craigie Center for Research on Child Wellbeing Office of Population Research Princeton University December 31, 2009

18. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/silicon-valley-is-reviving-the-discredited-and-discriminatory-idea-of-race/

19.  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3704307/

20.  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4354297/#sec11

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning

 The human ability to gather, interpret, and remember aspects of the reality in which they find themselves immersed, and of which they are a part, is key to the survival of both individual humans and the species itself. The acquisition of knowledge includes not only the gathering of facts but also the acquisition of skills necessary for the acquisition of more facts and the performance of tasks which call for the use of these facts. In general terms, the more information a human possesses, and the more skills that human commands, the greater the likelihood of survival and the possibility of reproductive success. The possession of facts and skills allows for an emergent phenomenon to manifest itself in a human mind: a concept of the world and a (partial) understanding of the processes by which it works. The growth of a human’s knowledge and skills base is the general definition of the term learning. The ability of a human to bring this knowledge and these skills to bear in given situations is of crucial importance to that human’s general well-being. As we will soon see, learning involves physical alterations of the brain itself. These alterations manifest themselves as changes in the density of connections between neurons and the establishment of new neuronal pathways, pathways which facilitate the recall of learned knowledge and methods of applying it in real-life situations. Memory and learning are therefore closely connected.

 The Physiology of Learning

 As we have already noted, learning is intimately connected to memory. It is ultimately another example of neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to physically modify itself. We should note that a full picture of how the brain’s neurons are modified by memory and learning (two of the foundations of cognition) is still being pieced together. Remarkable progress has nonetheless been made in this area in recent times. Technological advances have greatly facilitated this progress. The aim of this research is to understand how patterns of neuronal excitation and inhibition (what neuroscientists refer to as the E:I balance), in combination with patterns of gene expression, cause neuroplasticity to occur. It should be said that inhibition comes from a variety of sources and this has an effect on particular circuits.¹

 The fundamental principle, as we have seen in our examinations of consciousness and memory, is that experience has the ability to cause physical alterations within the brain’s neural circuitry. What is the process by which this happens? First, there must be some form of stimulus that reaches an individual’s senses. As we have seen, this stimulus is converted by the process of sensory transduction into electrical impulses which are then processed in the brain’s association areas. We briefly touched on Associative Memory in the chapter on memory. Now, we will look at those regions of the brain that neuroscientists call the association areas. We looked at these in a general way in our brief introduction to cognition. Now, we will examine their more specific components. Some of these areas are involved with the relationship between stimulus and motor response. Others are primarily oriented toward the processing of language and other symbolic forms of communication.

 Two specialists in brain research characterize the association area in the following manner:

 …higher-order association cortex is characterized by connectivity to association zones located in widely distributed positions throughout the cortex. Association regions in one zone of cortex (e.g. the inferior parietal lobule) will receive and send projections to zones of temporal, prefrontal, and midline association cortex.²

 In effect, the association areas of the brain form a network. As we have already seen, the formation of neural networks among and between cortical areas is a fundamental feature of the human brain. Two Harvard neuroscientists have hypothesized that during the evolution of the brain, the expansion of the association cortex “may have allowed for an archetype distributed network to fractionate into multiple specialized networks.” It is these specialized networks, they contend, that support the various higher order cognitive processes, including language.³

 A neuroscientist studying learning has identified these brain structures as part of the association regions: the medial temporal lobe (especially the hippocampus), motor regions of the frontal lobe (which are crucial in associating visual stimulus with motor response), the prefrontal cortex (also involved in linking visual stimulus to response), and the striatum.⁴ A pair of neuroscientists at Yale describe the striatum as follows:

 The striatum is a critical component of the brain that controls motor, reward, and executive function. This ancient and phylogenetically-conserved structure forms a central hub where rapid instinctive, reflexive movements and behaviors in response to sensory stimulation or the retrieval of emotional memory intersect with slower planned motor movements and rational behaviors…The convergence of excitatory glutamatergic activity from the thalamus and cortex, along with dopamine release in response to novel stimulation, provide the basis for motor learning, reward seeking, and habit formation.⁵

 In regard to those regions of the cortex involved in learning and using language, physiologists have identified regions of the brain’s left hemisphere involved in these processes.

 From different overviews…it is clear that the language-relevant cortex includes Broca's area in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), Wernicke's area in the superior temporal gyrus (STG), as well as parts of the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and the inferior parietal and angular gyrus in the parietal lobe. Within these macroanatomically defined regions, microanatomical subregions can be specified.⁶

More broadly, the physiology of the brain’s language centers allows for language acquisition, the learning of a language. We will examine these structures more closely in the chapter Speech and the Evolution of Language.

As we noted in this chapter’s introduction, learning causes changes in neural interconnectedness. Now we will focus more intently on the processes by which this occurs. We should emphasize that in learning it is the synapse itself that is being strengthened. A psychology professor and brain researcher has explained the phenomenon as follows:

The connections between neurons, through the synapses, however, are constantly changing throughout all of our life and are predominantly responsible for learning and memory in the brain. These changes in connections involve forming new connections, known as synaptogenesis, or strengthening existing connections, known as long-term potentiation (LTP)…

The researcher goes on to say that in laboratory experiments with rats, the rats’ synapses can form “more extensive interconnections between their neurons…with a greater number of synapses” when the rats are given suitable stimulation.⁷

Further, he points to a critical fact: when multiple neurons respond to a stimulus at the same time, the connections between them are strengthened, a hypothesis first proposed by the Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb.

 …Hebb described an important process for learning in the brain, known as Hebbian learning (1949), summed up by the phrase, “neurons that fire together wire together...”Put simply, when two or more neurons respond or fire at the same time (i.e., from some thought, action, or event in the environment) the connection or synapse between them is strengthened, leading to a stronger association. This means that if some situation (or thought or action) is encountered in the future causing one of those neurons to respond, it will now be more likely to trigger a response in the other connected neurons, recalling and further reinforcing that association.⁸

What are the mechanisms of neuroplasticity? Neurogenesis, as we noted above, apoptosis, or programmed cell death, (which we encountered in Volume One), and degrees of synaptic change caused by activity or non-activity. To quote one brain researcher, “Repetitive stimulation of synapses can cause long‐term potentiation or long‐term depression of neurotransmission.” These changes can cause physical alterations in dendritic spines. They can also alter neuronal circuits, and with them, behavior. These processes appear to have a major impact on the brain’s ability to acquire new information, react to quickly changing external circumstances, or recover from injury.⁹

We noted above that gene expression is a factor in neuroplasticity. Specifically, what that means is that there is a reciprocal relationship between synaptogenesis and a person’s genes. Gene mutations can cause errors in synaptic formation. These synaptic errors can in turn hinder neurodevelopment and damage the brain’s normal functions, sometimes very seriously so.¹⁰ In turn, synaptic formations can affect the expression of genes. As one study puts it, “…studies indicate that neuronal activity regulates a complex program of gene expression involved in many aspects of neuronal development.”¹¹

In addition to Hebbian learning, researchers also investigate synaptic scaling. Synaptic scaling refers to the ability of a neuron’s synapses to adjust their rate of firing in order to maintain their homeostatic equilibrium. Research has shown that neurons use calcium-dependent sensors to detect fluctuations in their firing rates. These sensors then allow greater or lesser accumulations of receptors for glutamate (the chief excitatory neurotransmitter) in the synapse.¹² Synaptic scaling seems to be crucial for the storage of associative memories, specifically, the ability of a person to remember important aspects and details of particular events.¹³

In humans there is, of course a relationship between learning and development, a relationship that sheds light on neural plasticity. The human brain has mechanisms that deal with experience-expectant plasticity [neuronal development based on common or nearly universal experiences such as exposure to language], and experience-dependent plasticity [neuronal development specific to the experiences of an individual, development which facilitates the ability to learn throughout life, and development that strengthens or eliminates neural connections]. The two forms of plasticity are deeply intertwined and both influence each other. Experience-dependent plasticity tends to be greater in children than adults, but plasticity in adults takes place in a different context. As one researcher has put it,  

…modifying synapses that are already committed (e.g. learning a motor skill such as juggling) is very different than committing the synapse for the first time (e.g. learning the motor coordination necessary for the first time a baby holds himself up).¹⁴

Researchers are also exploring the structure of the neocortex itself to gain insight into the learning process. One team of researchers, noting the hierarchical arrangement of the regions of the neocortex and the arrangement of cortical neurons into columns, has proposed a hypothesis about how the brain learns to recognize objects. In their words,

We believe each cortical column learns a model of “its” world, of what it can sense. A single column learns the structure of many objects and the behaviors that can be applied to those objects. Through intra-laminar [within layers] and long-range cortical-cortical connections, columns that are sensing the same object can resolve ambiguity.¹⁵

So the sensory stimulus that begins the processes of learning undergoes complex processing in the brain. This processing physically transforms the brain itself. From this, a synergy arises. The more the brain’s synapses are strengthened and the more neuronal circuitry is expanded, the greater the ability of the brain to absorb additional learning, which in turn will cause new waves of synaptic transformation.

Forms of Learning

What are the general ways in which humans learn? Perhaps the most basic one is imitation. How might imitation be defined? One team of researchers has put it this way:

…we use the broadest and simplest definition of imitation as follows—we call an action imitation if there is a relationship between the behaviour of a copier and a model, such that observing the movements of the model causes the parts of the copier's body to move in the same way relative to one another as the parts of the model's body…

In their description of it, imitative behavior is variable. People can use various parts of their body to imitate, such as their hands and faces. They can also imitate using their voices. Their imitations vary in accuracy and can be imitations of things which are new to them or familiar in varying degrees. Imitations can be conscious actions, or they can be spontaneous. And the result of these imitations is unpredictable.¹⁶

In the study of imitation, a major debate is over the issue of when children begin to imitate the actions of others. One researcher in the field of early childhood development contends that no genuine imitation occurs in humans until early in their second year, and that claims of newborns engaging in imitation rest on preformationism, “the view that development is the growth of pre-formed complex structures”. She finds no convincing evidence to support preformationist ideas, and contends that:

…imitation will be the emergent, stable product of the coming together of a range of distinct kinds of knowledge and skill. Such multi-component systems are not deterministic and do not follow a built-in blueprint for the development of behaviours. They are self-organizing and can generate new behaviours through their own activity.¹⁷

And a team of experts in the study of child psychology finds that toddlers can use imitation to communicate with others and are can take steps to ensure others see their imitation.¹⁸

It goes without saying that the ability to imitate is deeply ingrained in the human brain. Brain researchers have identified specific regions of the brain that facilitate imitation.

[The] Human ability to imitate movements is instantiated in parietal, premotor and opercular structures, often referred to as the human homologue of the macaque mirror neuron system…Critically, the activity of the parietal opercula bilaterally was associated with the anatomical compatibility effect. [NB: The anatomical compatibility effect is when a physical response to an observed phenomenon appears to be the most appropriate one, a response that increases with repetition.]  Furthermore, increased activity of the left middle frontal gyrus and right superior temporal sulcus (extending to the temporo-parietal junction) was found in those trials in which the spatial mapping between the seen and executed movements was detrimental for the anatomical task.¹⁹ 

Imitation plays a crucial role in language acquisition, as we will see in detail later. And in general imitation is so pervasive in the human experience that it may be the origin of human communication itself, a topic we will examine in a subsequent chapter.

Humans can also learn by means of conditioning. By conditioning we mean, in its most basic sense, a learned response to a given stimulus. Classical conditioning, also known as associative learning, means getting a subject to give a particular response to a neutral stimulus.  Operant conditioning is getting a subject to associate a given behavior with a specific consequence, either a reward or a punishment of some sort. Rewards naturally tend to increase the behaviors that result in them and punishments tend to decrease behaviors. These rewards or punishments are sometimes referred to as positive or negative reinforcement.

As is the case with imitation, conditioning is a pervasive feature of human life. (Operant conditioning governs much of child raising, for example.) One needn’t fall into the error of thinking that operant conditioning is the only factor that governs human behavior to see that in many cases it influences such behavior. But this influence always falls within a larger cognitive and experiential context.

In a later volume of this work, we will examine how the educational systems in human societies evolved and the methods by which they have attempted to build on the basic foundations of human learning.

The Relation Between Innate Behaviors and Learned Behaviors

There is a distinction between behaviors which require no learning process and those that do. Behaviors that require no learning are called innate. These are genetically-determined behaviors, such as reflexes or other bodily reactions to stimuli. Innate and learned behaviors are usually considered to be distinct, but in recent years many researchers have come to see them as deeply intertwined. There is evidence that certain neural circuits once considered to be innate demonstrate plasticity. It now seems certain that all complex behaviors are a synthesis of innate and learned behaviors, which shape each other in a synergistic fashion.²⁰ We will examine the relationship between genetic predisposition and experience in greater detail in a subsequent chapter.

It is sobering to remember that a great deal of what humans learn is utterly wrong. Humans learn “facts” (such as the belief that there was an actual Noah’s Ark) that bear no relationship to reality. They also learn prejudices. They learn ways to harm others. They learn bad habits and self-destructive behavior. My point is that learning is not always a benign thing, although in fact the vast majority of what humans learn is quite ordinary and mundane. But at its best learning exalts a human being, opening up realms of knowledge that transform them for the better, broaden their outlook on life and the world, give them skills which will prepare them for a variety of tasks, and help them to understand at least something about their place in reality. The learning process is vastly influenced by an individual’s intelligence. It is to the definition and nature of intelligence that we now turn, seeking in them clues to our success as a species. More darkly, we will see how the possession of intelligence is a two-edged sword, enabling us to dominate the world while at the same time giving us the power to destroy it.

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